How many rights are American's willing to watch be taken away without a fight?

Walker's backdoor dismantling of collective bargaining, Rhode Island's mass teacher firings, and Rick Snyder's Emergency management plan (you won't believe it if you haven't seen it). And of course all of this after a decades long assault on privacy and civil liberties. We sure aren't in Kansas (or any other recognizably American place) anymore.

Frustrating, isn't it? Apparently Michigan is now attempting to pass a bill which would allow the state government to unilaterally take over municipalities and install a preselected "emergency manager", which would be allowed to sell off the municipality's assets and dismiss its elected officials.

Apparently emergency managers can be people or corporations, so this would effectively open up the door to Walmart being able to take over Detroit and privatize it.

And you probably thought Robocop was a fictional movie!

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Of course they have a right to band together – it’s called freedom. Taxpayers (through their elected officials) don’t have to accept their unionizing but historically they have. Whether you want to call it a “right” or not, it is something that they had which has now been taken away, and if it matters to them they should fight for it, just as you should fight for the sanctity of your tax dollars.

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In some ways we are taking back our rights. Our rights as taxpayers not to be raped to serve the conscience of those who think others people's money is theirs to do as they please. Our right to have the federal government butt out of a states business. And so on and so on.

The government will only take away the rights that we surrender. If we stand up en masse, the cowardly politicians will back down.

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junky, as usual the tea party responses on any given thread that asks a real question are clueless!!

No one is ever forced to join anything they don't want to.

last time i checked.

people will NOT stand for this sort of wholesale yanking of the human rights table cloth from under the meal.

Ive not seen a response in my life time to a collective bargaining crisis as this one has been.

this is beautiful for unions and democracy. since only 12 percent of of the private sector is unionized and about 30 percent of the public workforce. Lots and lots of people know SHIT about the union movement and what benefits it gave them, like a weekend for instance. this new era will educate many of them.

to answer your question..... look at what happened when the patriot act was passed. Many of the people who were against it when it came back up (thanks by the way tea party, it was your one shining monent, lets hope for more.)

it back fired on the mainstream republicans because the tea party chimed in against renewing the provisions....its the one page that the left and the far right are on together.

some people are more sheepish than others, lets hope the right shows more ranks of people coming out against corporate power like they did that one time in January 2011.

on the contrary this move by the tea party govenors to abolish elections and collective bargaining will ultimatly backfire badly at the polls. the more their ideas are presented to the public at large, the more the public's stomach is turned and they regret electing these nut jobs.

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I see this as gaining rights as well. Teachers in Wisconsin (and soon in Ohio) will have a right to say no to forced union representation. I have no problem with someone joining a union, but I think it goes against the grain of American ideas to be forced into a Union because of one's profession. I think we need to draft a national "right to work" law; in no state should joining a union be a requirement of employment.

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A good politician can pick your pocket while shaking your hand. Wall street broke the bank and middle America is paying the tab. Taxpayer money was used to bail out wall street but rather than tax those who can afford it, we take money from teachers and children. Politicians are crying we got no money while your tax dollars sit in the bank accounts of the wealthy few who don't want to pay any more in taxes.

Scott Walker didn't take your phone call and he won't take mine. Judge a politician by what he does not what he says. Any man that attacts the middle class is not doing you any favors. Teachers did not break the bank wall street did. Wall street is back to getting big bonuses and we are stuck paying their bill.

I don't know how bad it has to get before we realize whose hand is in our pocket.

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There is no "right" for public employees to band together, to demand tribute from the taxpayers.

Labor unions are, in theory, an association of employees who use unity to influence the actions of the employer. The employer then weighs the actions of the employee against simply replacing them all. Nobody has a right to any job, period.

Who do public employees work for? The taxpayers, who foot the bill. Who do private employees work for? The owner of the business. Who do private employees collectively bargain with? The ones who write the checks and direct the business, ie, the ones who pay the wages. Who do public employees unionize against? Politicians, who are NOT the ones who fund the paychecks. Thus, there is no equivalence. There is no right to to have a public employee union, nor to engage in detrimental actions against the taxpayer. None. It violates every notion of self government.

Those of you who come here bleating this untruth... We the taxpayers, are extremely tired of your lies. We know that we pay the bills, and you're already, as public employees, far to adversarial to our interests, which you have been hired TO SERVE, not obstruct.

If you don't like the deal the taxpayers offer... Go get a job soemwhere else. That's the deal, and we the citizens have the right, by self government, to demand exactly that.

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